Calasiris the Pseudo-Greek Hero: Odyssean Allusions in Heliodorus' Aethiopica
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Pleasure and Instruction in the Prologue of Longus
SYMBOLAE PHILOLOGORUM POSNANIENSIUM GRAECAE ET LATINAE XIX• 2009 pp. 95-114. ISBN 978-83-232-2153-1. ISSN 0302-7384 ADAM MICKIEWICZUNIVERSITYPRESS, POZNAŃ BRUCE DUNCAN MACQUEEN Department of Comparative Literature, University of Silesia pl. Sejmu Śląskiego 1, 40-032 Katowice Poland PLEASURE AND INSTRUCTION IN THE PROLOGUE OF LONGUS’ DAPHNIS AND CHLOE ABSTRACT . Bruce Duncan MacQueen, Pleasure and instruction in the Prologue of Longus’ “Daphnis and Chloe”. The present study attempts to demonstrate that the ancient Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe system- atically explores the problem expressed by Horace in the phrase docere et delectare, and that this purpose is announced in the Prologue. The functions of prologues as such are briefly reviewed. After a consideration of the prologues of the remaining ancient Greek novels, the Prologue of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe is analyzed line by line. Longus uses the Prologue, then, to establish a series of dialectical tensions that operate throughout the novel, allowing it to delight and instruct at the same time. Key words: ancient Greek novel, Eros, paradox, paideia, hunting. INTRODUCTION A paradox often repeated, like a metaphor, eventually loses the shock value that makes it useful as a figure of speech. To use the terminology of cognitive psychology, it comes to be “overlearned,” repeated without reflec- tion at particular moments when the requisite prompt occurs. Its very fa- miliarity makes it fade into the background, where it ceases to draw atten- tion to itself. We have been told since childhood, for example, to “turn the other cheek,” so we repeat the phrase automatically and almost entirely ignore it in practice, since it no longer demands our attention. -
Reviving the Pagan Greek Novel in a Christian World Burton, Joan B Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1998; 39, 2; Proquest Pg
Reviving the Pagan Greek novel in a Christian World Burton, Joan B Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1998; 39, 2; ProQuest pg. 179 Reviving the Pagan Greek Novel in a Christian World Joan B. Burton N THE CHRISTIAN WORLD of Constantinople, in the twelfth century A.D., there was a revival of the ancient Greek novel, I replete with pagan gods and pagan themes. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the crucial role of Christian themes such as the eucharist and the resurrection in the shaping and recreation of the ancient pagan Greek world in the Byzan tine Greek novels. Traditionally scholars have focused on similarities to the ancient Greek novels in basic plot elements, narrative tech niques, and the like. This has often resulted in a general dismissal of the twelfth-century Greek novels as imitative and unoriginal.1 Yet a revision of this judgment has begun to take place.2 Scholars have noted that there are themes and imagery in these novels that would sound contemporary to many of their Byzantine readers, for example, ceremonial throne scenes and 1 Thus B. E. Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley 1967) 103: "the slavish imitations of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus which were written in the twelfth century by such miserable pedants as Eustathius Macrembolites, Theodorus Prodromus, and Nicetas Eugenianus, trying to write romance in what they thought was the ancient manner. Of these no account need be taken." 2See R. Beaton's important book, The Medieval Greek Romance 2 (London 1996) 52-88, 210-214; M. -
Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance Isabelle Raposo [email protected]
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Wellesley College Wellesley College Wellesley College Digital Scholarship and Archive Honors Thesis Collection 2019 Charicleia’s Dream: Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance Isabelle Raposo [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.wellesley.edu/thesiscollection Recommended Citation Raposo, Isabelle, "Charicleia’s Dream: Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance" (2019). Honors Thesis Collection. 641. https://repository.wellesley.edu/thesiscollection/641 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Wellesley College Digital Scholarship and Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Thesis Collection by an authorized administrator of Wellesley College Digital Scholarship and Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Charicleia’s Dream: Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance Isabelle Kennedy Raposo Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Classics April 2019 © Isabelle Raposo 2019 Introduction Dreams, Oracles, and Interpretation This thesis will analyze the ways in which Charicleia, the heroine of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, is characterized, using an oracular dream as a guide to interpretation. About the Aethiopica The Aethiopica, or “An Ethiopian story,” is the only known work of Heliodorus of Emesa, composed about 350 A.D. Little is known about the life of Heliodorus apart from the information he provides at the end of the Aethiopica: -
Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance Isabelle Kennedy
Charicleia’s Dream: Interpreting the Heroine of a Greek Romance Isabelle Kennedy Raposo Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Classics April 2019 © Isabelle Raposo 2019 Introduction Dreams, Oracles, and Interpretation This thesis will analyze the ways in which Charicleia, the heroine of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, is characterized, using an oracular dream as a guide to interpretation. About the Aethiopica The Aethiopica, or “An Ethiopian story,” is the only known work of Heliodorus of Emesa, composed about 350 A.D. Little is known about the life of Heliodorus apart from the information he provides at the end of the Aethiopica: “[the Aethiopica’s] author is a Phoenician of Emesa, of the race of the Sun—the son of Theodosius, Heliodorus” (277). Emesa stood on the same ground as the modern city of Homs, Syria, and was known for the local cult of the god ‘LH’GBL or Elahagabal.1 The church historian Sokrates refers to a bishop named Heliodorus, living in Thessaly around 385, who may have started the practice of married men entering the church becoming celibate.2 Synopsis Persinna, the queen of Ethiopia, conceives a child while consorting with her husband Hydaspes and looking at a wall painting of Andromeda. The child is born white as a result, in spite of both of her parents’ having dark skin, and Persinna embroiders the story of her conception on a ribbon. Gathering the ribbon and some unique jewels, she sends the child to be exposed. Sisimithres, a sage who is an advisor to the Ethiopian court, finds the baby and takes her to be raised by shepherds outside the Ethiopian capital city of Meroe. -
Silencing the Female Voice in Longus and Achilles Tatius
Silencing the female voice in Longus and Achilles Tatius Word Count: 12,904 Exam Number: B052116 Classical Studies MA (Hons) School of History, Classics and Archaeology University of Edinburgh B052116 Acknowledgments I am indebted to the brilliant Dr Calum Maciver, whose passion for these novels is continually inspiring. Thank you for your incredible supervision and patience. I’d also like to thank Dr Donncha O’Rourke for his advice and boundless encouragement. My warmest thanks to Sekheena and Emily for their assistance in proofreading this paper. To my fantastic circle of Classics girls, thank you for your companionship and humour. Thanks to my parents for their love and support. To Ben, for giving me strength and light. And finally, to the Edinburgh University Classics Department, for a truly rewarding four years. 1 B052116 Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………….1 List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………3 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….4 Chapter 1: Through the Male Lens………………………………………………………6 The Aftertaste of Sophrosune……………………………………………………………….6 Male Viewers and Voyeuristic Fantasy.…………………………………………………....8 Narratorial Manipulation of Perspective………………………………………………….11 Chapter 2: The Mythic Hush…………………………………………………………….15 Echoing Violence in Longus……………………………………………………………….16 Making a myth out of Chloe………………………………………………………………..19 Leucippe and Europa: introducing the mythic parallel……………………………………21 Andromeda, Philomela and Procne: shifting perspectives………………………………...22 Chapter 3: Rupturing the -
Theagenes' Sōphrosynē in Heliodorus' Aethiopica
Virtue Obscured: Theagenes’ Sōphrosynē in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica RACHEL BIRD Swansea University The concept of sōphrosynē has a central role in the genre of the Greek novel.1 The five extant texts have at their heart the representation of a mutual, heterosexual erotic relationship between beautiful, aristocratic youths and, in all of the novels apart from Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, the protagonists’ possession of sōphrosynē is a crucial part of their identity. They must prove their sōphrosynē when faced with sexual advances from lustful antagonists, and they often prove their fidelity through their innate regard for this virtue. While as a term and con- cept sōphrosynē2 is semantically complex, encompassing the qualities and psy- chological states of temperance, moderation, sanity, self-control and chastity, in the novels it generally refers to sexual restraint and the motivation behind chastity. The texts differ in their respective treatments of sōphrosynē: there is a spectrum from the representation of mutual chastity in Xenophon of Ephesus’ novel, which has been labelled obsessive,3 to the irreverent subversion of chastity found in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon.4 Despite these divergent treatments, the role of sōphrosynē is always fundamental to the ethics of these novels. Heliodorus’ Aethiopica has long been considered a complex work, particu- larly in terms of its narrative structure.5 The characterisation of its protagonists ————— 1 I consider the five extant works of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Longus, Achilles Ta- tius and Heliodorus to be examples of the genre of the Greek novel. For discussion of sōphrosynē in the novels, see Anderson 1997; De Temmerman 2014; Kaspryzsk 2009. -
Fragmentary Narration and Ambiguity in Heliodorus' Aethiopica
What Charicles Knew: Fragmentary Narration and Ambiguity in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica BENEDEK KRUCHIÓ University of Cambridge Towards the end of the tenth and last book of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, a character who was left behind by the protagonists in Delphi in Book Four makes a surpris- ing reappearance in Ethiopia: Charicles, the Greek foster-father of the heroine Charicleia, arrives in Meroe, where the royal couple reside, and demands his daughter back from king Hydaspes, who is her biological father. While Charicles’ resurfacing is in itself surprising,1 scholars have particularly been puzzled by the question what he knows about Charicleia when he enters the scene: when the girl and her lover Theagenes elope from Delphi, Charicles is aware of her Ethiopian background but not of her royal descent; however, according to the established reading of a short segment of the novel’s finale, he seems to know who her parents are when he brings forward his request. Heliodorean scholarship has heretofore contented itself with branding Cha- ricles’ differing states of knowledge as a striking inconsistency.2 I shall first show that this is not just in general an obviously unsatisfactory approach to a puzzling passage, but also highly unlikely to be an accurate explanation in the present case. My paper will proceed by presenting alternative solutions to this puzzle. The first one sticks to the conventional reading of the two abovementioned direct speeches, arguing firstly that the communicative line which results in Charicles’ acquisition of knowledge can be reconstructed, and secondly that certain narratological prop- erties of the Aethiopica invite the reader to make assumptions about unnarrated events like those which are necessary for explaining Charicles’ surprising state of ————— 1 According to Lowe 2003, 256, Charicles’ reappearance is ‘the novel’s final and most mas- terly programmed surprise’; cf. -
Seeing Gods: Epiphany and Narrative in the Greek Novels
Seeing Gods: Epiphany and Narrative in the Greek Novels ROBERT L. CIOFFI Bard College The Greek world was full of the divine, and the imagined world of the ancient novels was no different.1 Divinity and its worship pervade the novels’ narra- tives, helping to unite, drive apart, and then reunite their protagonists. In this paper, I explore the relationship between ancient religion and literature, the transformation of literary tradition, and the place of the marvelous in the nov- els’ narratives by examining the role that one aspect of the human experience of the gods, epiphany, plays in the genre. Although the novelists describe very few scenes of actual epiphany,2 they make abundant use of the epiphanic met- aphor in what I will call “epiphanic situations,” when an internal audience reacts to the hero or, most often, the heroine of the novel as if he or she were a god or goddess. These epiphanic situations transform the common metaphor of divine beauty into a reality, at least as experienced by the internal audience,3 and they offer the novelists an alternative to ekphrasis for expressing ineffable beauty. ————— 1 Zeitlin 2008, 91 writes: “The novels are full of: temples, shrines, altars, priests, rituals and offerings, dreams (or oracles), prophecies, divine epiphanies, aretalogies, mystic language and other metaphors of the sacred (not forgetting, in addition, exotic barbarian rites).” 2 In the novels, mortals are most frequently visited by divinities during dreams: e.g., Chari- ton 2,3; X. Eph. 1,12; Longus 1,7-8, 2,23, 2,26-27, 3,27, 4,34; Ach. -
The Spell of Achilles Tatius: Magic and Metafiction in Leucippe and Clitophon
The Spell of Achilles Tatius: Magic and Metafiction in Leucippe and Clitophon ASHLI J.E. BAKER Bucknell University Eros is “…δεινὸς γόης καὶ φαρμακεὺς καὶ σοφιστής…” (Plato, Symposium 203d) Introduction In the beginning of Book Two of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, the clever but thus far failed lover Clitophon witnesses a remarkable – and useful – scene. He passes by just as Clio, Leucippe’s slave, is stung on the hand by a bee. He sees Leucippe soothe Clio’s pain by singing incantations (ἐπᾴδω) she says she learned from an Egyptian woman.1 When Clitophon, determined to woo Leu- cippe, finds himself alone with her on the following day, he pretends that he too has been stung by a bee. Leucippe approaches, asking where he has been stung. In reply, Clitophon says, ————— 1 παύσειν γὰρ αὐτὴν τῆς ἀλγηδόνος δύο ἐπᾴσασαν ῥήματα· διδαχθῆναι γὰρ αὐτὴν ὑπό τινος Αἰγυπτίας εἰς πληγὰς σφηκῶν καὶ μελιττῶν. Καὶ ἅμα ἐπῇδε· καὶ ἔλεγεν ἡ Κλειὼ μετὰ μικρὸν ῥᾴων γεγονέναι. (2.7 - “…she would, she said, stop her pain by chanting two spells; she had been taught by an Egyptian woman how to deal with wasp- and bee-stings. As she had chanted, Clio had said that the pain was gradually relieved.”). All Greek text of Leu- cippe and Clitophon is that of Garnaud 1991. All translations are cited, with occasional alterations, from Whitmarsh 2001. I want to give special thanks to Catherine Connors for her insightful comments throughout the drafting of this paper. Thanks too to Alex Hollmann and Stephen Trzaskoma for feedback on earlier versions of this project. -
1 INTRODUCTION Achilles Tatius Despite the Explosion of Interest In
Cambridge University Press 0521642647 - Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon Helen Morales Excerpt More information 1 INTRODUCTION Achilles Tatius Despite the explosion of interest in ancient fiction over the last few decades, Leucippe and Clitophon remains the least studied of the five major Greek novels. To my knowledge, this is the first published monograph on Achilles; so far Leucippe has been left on the shelf. ‘Most moderns,’ explains Ewen Bowie in his entry on Achilles Tatius in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, ‘uncertain how to evaluate him, prefer Longus and Heliodorus.’1 Graham Anderson concurs: ‘Even at the lowest level of literary criticism, at which writers receive one-word adjectives, one can do something for the rest of the extant novelists: Xenophon of Ephesus is na¨ıve, Heliodorus cleverly convoluted, Longus artfully simple: yet what is one to say about Achilles?’2 Scholarship on the novel is moving forward so quickly that these comments will soon seem dated. Nevertheless, they are symptomatic of a fundamental difficulty: there is no consensus about what to make of Achilles Tatius; at the most basic level, about how to read him. Parody? Pastiche? Pornography? It is, as John Morgan puts it, a ‘hyper-enigmatic’ novel.3 Part of the problem is that Achilles Tatius is frequently eval- uated against the norms of the genre (often as the Joker in the pack: ‘[Achilles Tatius] inverse syst´ematiquementles conventions du genre’;4 ‘He conducts a prolonged guerrilla war against the conventions of his own genre’5), and the norms and the genre are themselves problematic to define.6 It is important to note that recent approaches to the genre have been driven by the last few decades’ 1 OCD, 3rd edn (1996), 7. -
The Entelechy of Telemachy 237
2 : The Entelechy of Telemachy 237 AI tel 2:02 P.M. 14/ 2: The Entelechy of Telemachy B-sides riding storys ware he-rows disap- pear INT.0 Himalayus, Ulysses also had a strange propensity for space travel. Left < = a door painting Us made in late ‘80s, prior to his trans-Sibeerun trip, a piece dat god d-stroyed in the apartment fire after witch he renounces painting + 2D art + turnt 2 ‘conceptual’ art + making objets + writing, nada perishable. In anudder of his storeys entitled “FA(R)THER FROM THE TRUTH”: a lone man out in space is working on a broken solar panel outside of the USS CONSTITUTION space stay- shun when there’s an xplosion + the probe he’s in spins off out of orebit. Dare ain’t nada no 1 can do. Contack is kept w/ hym for 3 hrs before his damedged communecake- shun unit kaputs. Ground cuntrol observes the probe for 3 days before it disappears from vu. Sighingtists estimate dat the sub- jet [Ulysses]122 cd of survived for 6 hrs [ Apollo 14 (on riserve enurgey from probes soler pan- FEBruary 1971 ] els) b4 he froze to deaf. 5 yrs + 20 dayz later the probe returns... as in a prior “Stranger in a Strange Land” tail we endid last edisope on, Us d-tales ∀ll sorts of hand- waving tech- + politickle jargon (clocks in at over 6 pgs, single spaced) + this probe defies all expectations of modurn sighence by returning to earth in a cuntrolled calm manner, creating an intl scandul dat again almost sparks WWIII. -
Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel
Abstracts What is this Philosophia Anyway? MICHAEL TRAPP This chapter explores contemporary understandings of philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as both a repository of final truth and a prac- tical, life-changing discipline, demanding life-long commitment to a project of self-formation. Drawing attention to the curious position of philosophy as both an insider and a self-conscious outsider to conventional educated cul- ture (paideia), it suggests that greater unease and greater potential for anxi- ety attended philosophia and philosophoi in the world of the novel than is often acknowledged. Michael Trapp is Professor of Greek Literature and Thought at King's Col- lege London. He is the author of Philosophy in the Roman Empire: Ethics, Politics and Society, and the editor of Socrates from Antiquity to the Enlight- enment and Socrates in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (all Ash- gate, 2007). The Representation of Philosophers in Greek Fiction J.R. MORGAN This paper reviews the depiction of philosophers in five works of Greek fiction: Chariton’s Callirhoe, the fragmentary Metiochus and Parthenope, Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders beyond Thule, Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Story, and the Life of Aesop. Although there is naturally some divergence in these texts, there is in general little sign of engagement with philosophical thought through the personage of the philosopher, and in no case is the philosopher employed as an authorially validated vehicle of ideas or the text’s final mes- sage. It is striking that in each case, the philosopher is constructed as an am- biguous and complex figure, embodying the ambivalence of contemporary culture towards philosophy.